Roasted Butternut Squash Kale Sauté

Great side dish for the holidays! Roasted cubes of butternut squashed tossed with balsamic sautéed onions, kale, pecans, dried cranberries.

Photography Credit:
Elise Bauer

Looking for a great holiday side? How about a drop dead delicious, healthy kale and squash sauté that is surprisingly easy to put together?

Roast cubes of butternut squash so they get tasty caramelized edges. While roasting the squash, prep the onions and kale and then sauté them with balsamic vinegar, adding the squash, pecans, and cranberries at the end. Simple. Beautiful. Packed with flavor and color.

The balsamic vinegar? It’s what makes all the difference. The sweet tartness just intensifies the flavors of the onions, squash and kale.

Oh yeah, it’s also vegan. It may even be paleo (if you swap out the sweetened dried cranberries with raisins).

Every year we try to come up with at least one sparkling holiday side that will wow your guests. This year this is it. I’m making it for our Thanksgiving dinner and hope you do too!

Method

1 Roast cubed butternut squash: Preheat oven to 425°F. Place cubed butternut squash in a bowl and toss with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Spread out onto a lined baking sheet. Roast in oven for 25 minutes or until the squash is cooked through and browned on the edges.

2 Sauté onions and garlic: 15 minutes into roasting the butternut squash, start on the onions. Heat olive oil on medium high heat in a thick-bottomed 4 to 5 quart pot. Add the sliced red onion and toss to coat. Let cook for 7 to 8 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and cook a minute more.

3 Add balsamic and kale: Add the balsamic vinegar and the shredded kale. Stir until the kale is mixed well with the onions (it helps to use tongs to turn over the kale). Let cook for a minute or two until the kale is just wilted (don't overcook).

Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.

Hello! I love your recipes! I actually made this on a night that I was making pork tacos. I ended up leaving out the balsamic and the pecans. My meat wasnt ready by dinner time so I subbed this mixture into tacos. It was delicious and now I make it just to eat as a taco filling :). Thank you!

This was a really good recipe. Next time I’m going to dice the onions rather than leave them long though. I like the taste of onions but not necessarily the texture of them. I eat mostly vegetables so this was my main meal and I had this with a tiny piece of steak :-) perfect match.

This ended up being quite versatile! We had whole pumpkins to use up, so I subbed that for the butternut squash (same roasting time + technique). I used golden raisins instead of the dried cranberries. I tripled the recipe and ended up with a lot of leftovers. Half ended up in a creamy soup (I simmered everything in chicken stock + olive oil then pureed in blender). The other half went into a savory tart (sheet of puff pastry, veggies, sheet of puff pastry, bake 40 minutes @ 400). The leftovers were even better than the original recipe, because of the added savory aspect that worked better for my family’s palate. The pecans made both the pastry and the soup so good!

Hi Elise! Caitlin from Salon Cabochon here! I made this for a side like I said I would and it was amazing! Even for the challenged newbie chef like me! Great instructions and loved the pictures! I think this may be my Thanksgiving dish I’m told to bring every year now! Thanks for sharing it with me…I’m excited to try other recipes as well! Happy Thanksgiving dear!

This sounds delicious as is, but Do you suppose this would work with Brussels sprouts in place of the kale (just because I have them in the fridge right now)? If I roasted it along with the butternut squash with the balsalmic vinegar?

This was absolutely delicious! And a beautiful dish as well. I subbed spinach because that’s what I had but kept everything else to the recipe, though my squash took about 45 minutes to get brown on the edges.

Made this in stages – it turned out great. Will be perfect for busy-kitchen situations (like Thanksgiving) as it can be prepped a bit at a time. I used toasted pecans – it gave the dish a little extra crunch and another layer of flavor. I’ll be making this again and again!

Gorgeous! I used a mix of Russian kale and beet gardens from the garden, thought they’d take much longer to cook than they did: cutting the greens really thin is key to that! This is so substantial, it’s a definite candidate for Meatless Monday. I love it when you take on vegetables!